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Vote Leave veterans to launch Brexit pressure group

LONDON — A new U.K. pressure group backed by a number of high profile Euroskeptic politicians will be launched this weekend to ensure the government does not abandon the central pledges of the Brexit campaign.

The move comes as cracks are starting to appear in Britain’s new government’s attitude to the Brexit negotiations. In the coming months, Theresa May, the prime minister, and her cabinet will have to make some difficult decisions, trying to balance the Euroskeptics’ desires for curbs on immigration with the financial sector’s urge to maintain access to the EU single market.

The group, called “Change Britain,” will be chaired by the German-born Labour MP Gisela Stuart, a prominent figure in the campaign for British withdrawal from the European Union, sources in Westminster and the City of London confirmed.

Westminster insider Paul Stephenson, an influential figure in the Vote Leave campaign and close ally of leading Brexiteer Michael Gove, is helping to set up the group, a senior source told POLITICO.

Critics of the new group said it was little more than a continuation of Vote Leave under a new name.

One figure involved in the campaign said the group was designed to bring both sides of the referendum campaign together to ensure the government “gets the best deal for Britain.”

According to senior sources familiar with the group’s plans, Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, was keen to get involved in the campaign but it’s unclear if he will take a public role.

The formation of the Change Britain pressure group comes amid the first signs of a cabinet split over Britain’s Brexit negotiations.

Number 10 this week moved quickly to slap down Brexit Secretary David Davis after he claimed Britain would have to leave the single market to regain control over migration.

Philip Hammond, the chancellor of the exchequer, told the House of Lords that free movement could continue for high skilled workers in the financial services sector. He is known to favor “sector by sector” access to the single market.

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Nathan Collins

Great. I’m looking forward to seeing what lies they can come up with to compete with the Leave campaign’s greatest hits from during the campaign. As an added bonus, Gisela Stuart can now push for the points-based system that would have kept her out of the country had it been in place back when she moved here. She’s the useful idiot’s useful idiot.

Posted on 9/9/16 | 5:53 PM CET

John Bloomfield

Hardly surprising… “The official Remain campaign, known as Britain Stronger In Europe, has relaunched as a campaign group called Open Britain”. They have been up and running just over a week and, while conceding that they lost, will be looking to minimise changes in our relationship with the EU – changes so minimal in the Soubry version that they would be practically invisible to the naked eye. Anna Soubry is of course a moderate when compared with Messrs. Blair, Ashdown, Farron, Smith & Co who all think that they were misled, that it didn’t really count, like “What was the question?” and we should do it again.

There was a suggestion from Philip Hammond yesterday that control of immigration is the new ‘political reality’, given the (regrettable) decision of the British people. As if that might be it. Just fix immigration and mutual self-interest will take care of the rest: everything will fall into place as if nothing much happened. No. It’s not just borders but, as David Davis said in the Commons: it is British control of our borders, our money and above all our laws.If the Remainers in and out of government try to finesse this and there is backsliding they will come unstuck.

Posted on 9/9/16 | 7:07 PM CET

DAVID HULME

Nathan Collins you dipstick still hanging on to the remain in lies .please tell us all who ever in there right mind would want to stay in there with all that we know now , And everything we have been taken and this free movement crap which just a drain on all our services .Wake up for goodness .

Posted on 9/10/16 | 9:40 PM CET

Art

An important initiative to keep the Government on course and successfully shape and move forward the Brexit process.

A not unimportant longer-term benefit of this will be that when done right, the Brexit will provide a manual for future article 50 negotiations for an orderly re-sizing or dissolution of the EU without strife or worse.